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2018 was another year of change, disruption and transformation across media and technology. Although hyped technologies – VR, blockchain, AI music – failed to meet inflated expectations, concepts such as privacy, voice, emerging markets and peak in the attention economy shaped the evolution of digital content businesses, in a year that was one to remember for subscriptions across all content types. These are some of the meta trends that we think will shape media, brands and tech in 2019 (see the rest of the report for industry specific predictions):

Privacy as a product: Apple has set out its stall as the defender of consumer privacy as a counter weight to Facebook and Google, whose businesses depend upon selling their consumers’ data to advertisers. The Cambridge Analytica scandal was the start rather than the end. Companies that can – i.e. those that do not depend upon ad revenue – will start to position user privacy as a product differentiator.

Green as a product: Alphabet could potentially position around environmental issues as it does not depend as centrally on physical distribution or hardware manufacture for its revenue. For all of Apple’s genuinely good green intentions, it fundamentally makes products that require lots of energy to produce, uses often scarce and toxic materials and consumes a lot of energy in everyday use. Meanwhile, Amazon uses excessive packaging and single delivery infrastructure, creating a large carbon footprint. So, we could see fault lines emerge with Alphabet and Facebook positioning around the environment as a counter to Apple and potentially Amazon positioning around privacy.

The politicisation of brands: Nike’s Colin Kaepernick advert might have been down to cold calculation of its customer base as much as ideology, but what it illustrated was that in today’s increasingly bipartisan world, not taking a position is in itself taking a position. Expect 2019 to see more brands take the step to align themselves with issues that resonate with their user bases.

The validation of collective experience: The second decade of the millennium has seen the growing success of mobile-centric experiences across social, music, video, games and more. But this has inherently created a world of siloed, personal experiences, of which being locked away in VR headsets was but a natural conclusion. The continued success of live music alongside the rise of esports, pop-up events and meet ups hints at the emotional vacuum that digital experiences can create. Expect 2019 to see the rise of both offline and digital events (e.g. live streaming) that explicitly look to connect people in shared experiences, and to give them the validation of the collective experience – the knowledge that what they experienced truly was something special but equally fleeting.

Tech major content portfolios: All of the tech majors have been building their content portfolios, each with a different focus. 2019 will be another year of content revenue growth for all four tech majors, but Apple may be the first to take the next step and start productising multi-content subscriptions, even if it starts doing so in baby steps by making Apple original TV shows available as part of an Apple Music subscription.

Rights disruption: Across all content genres, 2019 will see digital-first companies stretch the boundaries and challenge accepted wisdoms. Whether that be Spotify signing music artists, DAZN securing top tier sports rights, or Facebook acquiring a TV network. These are all very different moves, but they reflect a changing of the guard, with technology companies being able to bring global reach and big budgets to the negotiating table. Expect also more transparency, better reporting and more agile business terms.

GDPR sacrificial lamb: In 2018 companies thought they got their houses in order for GDPR compliance. Most consumers certainly thought they had, given how many opt in notifications they received in their inboxes.
However, many companies skirted around the edges of compliance, especially US companies. In 2019 we will see European authorities start to police compliance more sternly. Expect some big sacrificial lambs in 2019 to scare the rest of the marketplace into compliance. They will also aim to educate the world that this is not a European problem, so expect some of those companies to be American. Watch your back Facebook.

Big data backlash: By now companies have more data, data scientists and data dashboards than they know what to do with. 2019 will see some of the smarter companies start to realise that just because you can track it does not mean that you need to track it. Many companies are beginning to experience data paralysis, confounded by the deluge of data, with management teams unable to decipher the relevance of the analysis put together by their data scientists and BI teams. A simplified, streamlined approach is needed and 2019 will see the start of this.

Voice, AI, machine learning (and maybe AR) all continue on their path: These otherwise disparate trends are pulled together for the simple reason that they are long-term structural trends that helped shape the digital economy in 2018 and will continue to do so in 2019. Rather than try to over simplify into some single event, we instead back each of these four trends to continue to accelerate in importance and influence.

But as with all previous lip synching and music messenger apps, Musical.ly has run into its inevitable user base peak and is now starting its equally inevitable decline. According to data from MIDiA’s Quarterly Brand Tracker, weekly active users (WAU) across the US, UK, Canada and Australia and was just 1.4% in Q3 2017, down from a high of 2.1% in Q1. Dubsmash is following a similar trajectory.

So, what’s gone wrong for Musical.ly?

To be clear, Musical.ly is not a failing company but it is beyond its peak. Musical.ly did an amazing job of laser targeting, becoming one of the destinations of choice for teen and tween females. More than four fifths of its user base are female. It recognized that the opportunity for this segment wasn’t full albums, nor even full tracks. It was short clips of music that they could use to express, and identify, themselves. In Musical.ly, music was the tool for Gen Z identity, not consumption. It tapped into Gen Z’s desire to digitally peacock, or to show off and say who they are. The problem for Musical.ly is that Snapchat and Instagram do a great job of this for these consumers too. Musical.ly became a one trick pony that suffered from not being able to use its core functionality as a beachhead for something much bigger. In the 20th century the railroad companies were disrupted by cars because they thought they were railroad companies and didn’t realise they were transportation companies. Similarly, Musical.ly got caught up with being a social music company rather than a social company.

In many respects Musical.ly was a victim of the West Coast VC bubble, following the mantra of obsessing with doing one thing really well. As a result, Silicon Valley has a habit of churning out feature companies rather than product companies. This isn’t a problem for VCs as it is easier for a company to buy and integrate a feature company, than it is a product company. But, it does leave the digital landscape unbalanced.

Jinri Toutiao has every opportunity to build a music messaging powerhouse with its acquired assets but to succeed, it will need to recognize that these are features not products.

2016 was the year that streaming turned the recorded music business into a good news story, with revenue growth so strong that it drove nearly a billion dollars of total growth. Leading streaming services spent the year competing with ever more impressive metrics while playlisting and streaming exclusives became cornerstones of the wider music market both culturally and commercially. 2017 is set to be another year of growth and the coming decade will see the music industry become a streaming industry in all but name. In this, MIDiA’s 2nd annual benchmark of the global streaming business, we present a definitive assessment of the global market, combining an unprecedented breadth and depth of supply side, demand side and market level data, as well as revenue and user forecasts out to 2025. This is quite simply the most comprehensive of assessment of the streaming music market available. If your business is involved in the streaming music market this is the report you need.

Key features for the report:

32 pages

4,650 words

17 charts

9,000+ data point dataset

At the bottom of this post is a full list of the figures included in the report. The report is immediately available to all paid MIDiA music subscribers.

Pricing has long been an issue for streaming music subscriptions, with the $/€/£ 9.99 price point above what most people spend on music each month. Streaming services have navigated around the issue with a combination of tactics such as telco bundles and aggressive price discounts (e.g. $1 for 3 months). However, these tactics place long term pressure on the 9.99 price point as they create a consumer perception that streaming music should be cheaper than it is. There is no doubt that discounts are doing a great job of converting users and of easing otherwise reluctant consumers into the 9.99 pricing, but the next phase of the streaming market requires a more sustainable approach to pricing strategy, coupled with some serious product innovation.

To explore this issue in detail, MIDiA has published its latest music report: Streaming Music Pricing: Inelastic Stretching. In it we use proprietary MIDiA data to assess how much of the 9.99 opportunity has been tapped, how much further opportunity exists and what level of demand exists for different price points.

These are some of the key takeaways from the report:

2017 will be a stellar streaming year: A combination of enough growth being left in the market and the continued success of pricing discounts should see subscriber numbers grow at a slightly faster rate in 2017 than they did in 2016, hitting 146.6 million. This is up 44.3 million from the 106.3 million hit in 2016. (That 2016 figure is 5.9 million more than our provisional estimate published back in the start of January, as the result of receiving a couple of slightly stronger than expected numbers. However, the increase is not due to the very high subscriber numbers reported elsewhere for some Chinese services. We consider these numbers to be high and we place our estimate closer to half of those.) By 2018, subscriber growth will begin to lessen and by 2019 we’ll be in market maturation phase. Around 2/3 of the readily addressable opportunity for 9.99 has already been tapped and this remainder is what will drive the 2017 growth. New tactics will be required for the rest of the cycle.

Beyond 9.99: Emerging markets, new partnerships and discounts will all be important growth tactics, but pricing will also be key. Many readers will be familiar with my longstanding enthusiasm for mid tier streaming pricing. Unfortunately, mid-tier pricing by stealth (e.g. price discounts, student offers) coupled with an overly resplendent free marketplace (YouTube, Vevo, Spotify free, etc.) have combined to suck most of the oxygen out of the mid tier sector. Nonetheless, there is a major need for something to cater for the lower end of the market. One of the key sections in the report reveals that streaming pricing is inelastic and the change in demand is smaller than the change in pricing. Even dropping the main price to $6.99 would only result in reducing the size of the streaming market.

Unbundling: So how do we square the circle? By using super low prices (e.g. 2.99; 3.99) to launch laser focused niche apps aimed at specific demographics and genres. This can be done both by standalone specialists (e.g. the Overflow, FreqsTV) and by the big incumbents taking a leaf out of Facebook’s app strategy and creating standalone, unbundled apps. In order for them to work, they cannot simply look like a thin slice of Spotify or Apple Music. They have to be as different from their parent apps as Instagram and Whatsapp are from Facebook. That means new user experiences, new functionality, different approaches to programming/ curation and standalone branding. To work, mid tier products have to look like something unique, not a compromised, watered down version of the full fat product. Mid tier services risk looking like low-fat, gluten-free, sugar-free, organic, diet, hand knitted soya milk. While there is a market for it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the market is in fact tiny.

So, a good 2017 looks on the cards for streaming, one which will confirm the maturity of the streaming sector as a whole. But the next stage of the market will require product and pricing innovation, at both the high end and the low end. Now is the time to start putting the pieces in place for 2018 and beyond.

Spotify’s 2015 UK accounts painted a vibrant picture with both profits and above average Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). However, a little caution is required before assuming all the answers to the streaming market’s woes can be found here. Firstly, only a portion of Spotify’s costs are based in the UK. For example, much of the (more highly paid) exec team is in the US and much of the development team is based in Sweden. Such are the vagaries of financial reporting for multi-territory companies. More importantly though, is Spotify’s higher UK subscriber ARPU (€6.47 per month compared to €5.20 per month globally according to the ever insightful Music Business Worldwide). On the surface this is clear success (and indeed the UK may well have a higher paid-to-free ratio). However, the main reason for the ARPU difference is the music industry’s fixation with non-discretionary pricing. 9.99 is 9.99 in the US, the UK and the Euro zone, even though each of those currencies have very different values. Especially now post-Brexit referendum.

At current exchange rates, the Euro Zone €9.99 is equivalent $10.86 and the UK £9.99 price point is equivalent to $12.18. Thus Euro Zone subscribers are paying 9% more than US subscribers while UK subscribers are paying 22% more. What makes matters even worse is that US per capita GDP (a measure of relative wealth of the population) is 55% higher in the US than in the EU and 27% higher than in the UK. So in effect that means a combined pricing ‘swing’ of 63% for the US compared to the Euro Zone and 49% compared to the UK.

In short, European subscribers are getting doubly hit by the music industry’s insistence on non-discretionary pricing for music subscriptions. While there are a host of commercial factors that can be cited in favour of the approach (e.g. it helps mitigate against currency fluctuations) there is zero customer value, unless of course you happen to be a US resident consumer.

Regular readers will know I am a long term advocate of a more sophisticated approach to subscription pricing (e.g. mid tier products and super-premium options) but before we get there, a first step should be to ensure that European music fans get a fair deal compared to their US peers. Or of course, we could try the alternative: increasing US subscriptions by 63% which would mean a $16.32 price point. Sounds crazy right? Exactly…

One of the themes my MIDiA colleague Tim Mulligan (the name’s no coincidence, he’s my brother too!) has been developing over in our online video research is that of next generation TV operators. With the traditional pay-TV model buckling under the pressure of countless streaming subscriptions services like Netflix (there are more than 50 services in the US alone) pay-TV companies have responded with countless apps of their own such as HBO Go and CBS All Access. The result for the consumer is utter confusion with a bewildering choice of apps needed to get all the good shows and sports. This creates an opportunity for the G.A.A.F. (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook) to stitch all these apps together and in doing so become next generation TV operators. Though the G.A.A.F. are a major force in music too, the situation is also very different. Nonetheless there is an opportunity for companies such as these to create a joined up music experience that delivers an end-to-end platform for artists and music fans alike. Right now, Spotify is best placed to fulfil this role and in doing so it could become a next generation “label”. I added the quote marks around the word “label” because the term is becoming progressively less useful, but it at least helps people contextualise the concept.

Creating The Right Wall Street Narrative

When news emerged that Spotify was in negotiations to buy Soundcloud I highlighted a number of potential benefits and risks. One thing I didn’t explore was how useful Soundcloud could be in helping Spotify build out its role as a music platform (more on that below). As I have noted before, as Spotify progresses towards an IPO it needs to construct a series of convincing narratives for Wall Street. The investor community generally looks upon the music business with, at best, extreme caution, and at worst, disdain. To put it simply, they don’t like the look of low-to-negative margin businesses that have little control over their own destinies and that are trying to sell a product that most people don’t want to buy. This is why Spotify needs to demonstrate to potential investors that it is working towards a future in which it has more control, and a path to profitability. The major label dominated, 17% gross operating margin (and –9% loss) 9.99 AYCE model does not tick any of those boxes. Spotify is not going to change any of those fundamentals significantly before it IPOs, but it can demonstrate it is working to change things.

The Role Of Labels Is As Important As Ever

At the moment Spotify is a retail channel with bells and whistles. But it is acquiring so much user data and music programming expertise that it be so much more than that. The role of record labels is always going to be needed, even if the current model is struggling to keep up. The things that record labels do best is:

Discover, invest in and nurture talent

Market artists

Someone is always going to play that role, and while the distribution platforms such as Spotify could, in theory at least, play that role in a wider sense, existing labels (big and small) are going to remain at the centre of the equation for the meaningful future. Although some will most likely fall by the wayside or sell up over the next few years. (Sony’s acquisition of Ministry Of Sound is an early move rather than an exception.) But what Spotify can do that incumbent labels cannot, is understand the artist and music fan story right from discovery through to consumption. More than that, it can help shape both of those in a way labels on their own cannot. Until not so recently Spotify found itself under continual criticism from artists and songwriters. Although this has not disappeared entirely it is becoming less prevalent as a) creators see progressively bigger cheques, and b) more new artists start their career in the streaming era and learn how to make careers work within it, often seeing streaming services more as audience acquisition tools rather than revenue generators.

The Balance Of Power Is Shifting Away From Recorded Music

In 2000 record music represented 60% of the entire music industry, now it is less than 30%. Live is the part that has gained most, and the streaming era artist viewpoint is best encapsulated by Ed Sheeran who cites Spotify as a key driver for his successful live career, saying “[Spotify] helps me do what I want to do.” Spotify’s opportunity is to go the next step, and empower artists with the tools and connections to build all of the parts of their career from Spotify. This is what a next generation “label” will be, a platform that combines data, discovery, promotion (and revenue) with tools to help artists with live, merchandise and other parts of their career.

How Spotify Can Buy Its Way To Platform Success

To jump start its shift towards being a next-generation “label” Spotify could use its current debt raise – and post-IPO, its stock – to buy companies that it can plug into its platform. In some respects, this is the full stack music concept that Access Industries, Liberty Global and Pandora have been pursuing. Here are a few companies that could help Spotify on this path:

Soundcloud: arguably the biggest artist-to-fan platform on the planet, Soundcloud could form a talent discovery function for Spotify. Spotify could use its Echo Nest intelligence to identify which acts are most likely to break through and use its curated playlists to break them on Spotify. Also artist platforms like BandPage and BandLab could play a similar role.

Indie labels: Many indie labels will struggle with cash flow due to streaming replacing sales, which means many will be looking to sell. My money is on Spotify buying a number of decent sized indies. This will demonstrate its ability to extend its value chain footprint, and therefore margins (which is important for Wall Street). It could also ‘do a Netflix’ and use its algorithms to ensure that its owned-repertoire over performs, which helps margins even further. But more importantly, indie labels would give Spotify a vehicle for building the careers of artists discovered on Soundcloud. Also the A&R assets would be a crucial complement to its algorithms.

Tidal: Spotify could buy Tidal, taking advantage of Apple’s position of waiting until Tidal is effectively a distressed asset before it swoops. Though Tidal is most likely to want too much money, its roster of exclusives and its artist-centric ethos would be a valuable part of an artist-first platform strategy for Spotify.

Songkick: In reality Songkick is going to form part of Access’ Deezer focused full stack play. But a data-led, live music focused company (especially if ticketing and booking can play a role) would be central to Spotify driving higher margin revenues and being able to offer a 360 degree proposition to artists.

Pandora: A long shot perhaps, but Pandora would be a shortcut to full stack, having already acquired Ticket Fly, Next Big Sound and Rdio. If Pandora’s stock continues to tank (the last few days of recovery notwithstanding) then who knows.

In conclusion, Spotify’s future is going to be much more than being the future of music retail. With or without any of the above acquisitions, expect Spotify to lay the foundations for a bold platform strategy that has the potential to change the face of the recorded music business as we know it.

When Frank Ocean’s latest album ‘Blond’ dropped, it did so like a nuclear bomb, sending shockwaves throughout the music industry. In one of the audacious release strategies of recent years Ocean and his team at 360 fulfilled the final album contractual commitment to Universal Music by ushering his breaking-the-mold visual album ‘Endless’ onto Apple Music. Featuring collaborations from the likes of Sampha and James Blake and set as a loose soundtrack to art house visuals, ‘Endless’ looked like the sort of digitally native, creative masterstroke that would win plaudits and awards in equal measure. But no sooner had Universal executives started daydreaming about Grammys then along came what turned out to be the ‘actual’ album ‘Blonde’, self released by Ocean (Universal contractual commitments now of course conveniently fulfilled) and, for now at least, exclusively available on Apple Music. You can just imagine seeing the blood drain from (Universal CEO) Lucian Grainge’s face as the full magnitude of what had just happened came into focus. In truth ‘audacious’ doesn’t even come close to explaining what Ocean pulled off, but where it gets really interesting is what this means for the future of artist careers.

Just as labels had started to successfully co-opt the label services marketplace by launching their own – e.g. Universal’s Caroline – or by buying up the competition – e.g. Sony’s acquisition of Essential Music & Marketing – along come streaming services giving artists another non-label route to market. In truth, the threat has remained largely unrealised. Exclusives on Tidal have most often proved to be laced with caveats and get out clauses (e.g. Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ arriving on iTunes 24 hours after landing ‘exclusively’ on Tidal). Chance The Rapper’s (in name only) mixtape ‘Colouring Book’ and Ocean’s ‘Blond’ are exceptions rather than the rule. So all that’s about to change now right? Not necessarily…

Album Releases Require More Time Than Apple Probably Has

As anyone who works in a label will tell you, releasing an album is typically a long, carefully planned process with many moving parts. It’s not something you do in a couple of weeks (Ocean started building the hype and expectation for his latest opus a year ago). If, for example, Apple was going to start doing exclusives routinely, even if it just did 20, that’s still a new exclusive to push every 2 weeks. That might work, at a stretch, for music service retailing promotional pushes but is far short of a fully fledged album release cycle. Which means that even for just 20 exclusives Apple would have an intricate mesh of overlapping release campaigns. This is something that labels do with their eyes closed but would it require new organizational disciplines for Apple. Not impossible, but not wholly likely either.

In practice, exclusives are likely to be limited to being the crown jewels of streaming services, their most valuable players, creative playmakers if you like. Even for Netflix, that pioneering exemplar of the streaming originals strategy, only spends 15% of its $3 billion content budget on originals and probably won’t break 20% even by 2020. What Apple and Netflix have in common is that they are using exclusives as a customer acquisition strategy, achieving their aims by making a big noise about each one. But if you’re releasing exclusives every week or two the shine soon wears off. And suddenly the return on investment diminishes.

Streaming Exclusives Are Unlikely To Turn Into A Flood

None of this means that we won’t see more artists striking streaming exclusives. We will, regardless of what labels may actually want to happen. And most of those will probably be on Apple – the service with bottomless pits masquerading as pockets. But the trickle will not turn into a flood, a fast flowing stream perhaps (see what I did there) but not a torrent.

Most importantly of all though, is that streaming exclusives (and indeed label services deals) work best when an artist has already established a brand and an audience. Most often that means after an artist has had a record label recording career. Apple cannot be relied upon to build anything more than a handful of artist brands. One of the founding myths of the web was that it was going to do away with labels and other traditional ‘gatekeepers’. Now, decades later, labels still account for the vast, vast, vast majority of music listening. Make no mistake, a momentous value chain shift is taking place, with more power and autonomy shifting to the creators, but that is a long journey and ‘Blond’ is but one part of this much bigger shift.

This week I delivered a keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on the future of media. I focused on three key areas of digital content:

Digital Music

Online Video

Mobile Apps

Pulling together these three different strands really shone a light on where music sits in the broader digital economy. One of the key themes I explored was how the streaming music business relies on pretty much the same model as mobile games like Clash Of Clans, i.e. relying on a tiny share of the total audience to pay. The big difference is that the annual ARPU of a King customer is $290.41 while for Universal Music the annual ARPU of a streaming music subscriber is $29.77. Universal Music rightly got a lot of attention recently for becoming the first billion Dollar streaming music company. Universal has managed to make streaming revenue scale. However streaming remains a revenue stream that is plagued by free. Only 10% of the total streaming audience (i.e. including YouTube and Soundcloud) is paid, and though this small group generates 71% of Universal’s streaming revenue, the blended ARPU is just $4.15. That’s $4.15 for the entire year of 2015, not per month. You can see my full analysis of how free-to-paid conversion ratios and ARPU compare across big media companies here.

But perhaps most revealing is the relative scale of music compared to everything else. As the graphic below reveals, digital music (at retail values) will be just 10% of digital content revenue by 2020, down from 16% in 2015. So digital music is both small and losing market share. Online video, which is at an earlier stage of its development, is already bigger (at retail value) than the entire recorded music business (at trade value), while mobile app revenue is double that of online video.

Yet music continually punches above its weight. Its impact on culture and emotions far outweighs that of apps (for now at least) and music artists still have far more dedicated fan bases than actors generally do (again, for now at least). Music’s impact is far beyond its revenue, even in business terms. Just look at all the brands, telcos and device companies that fall over themselves to be associated with music.

Nonetheless, the reality that must be accepted is that sooner or later, recorded music’s diminished revenue footprint is going to catch up with it. Major record labels enjoy a privileged position, because rights are so concentrated in music they each have an effective monopoly power because each of them have the power of veto if they say no. (You try launching a mainstream music service without one of the majors). This can sometimes lead to hubris and over confidence. In video and apps, rights are far more fragmented and consequently no single rights owner has market shaping power. (As an aside it is worth asking whether rights concentration is contributing to digital music losing pace with the digital content economy.) The clear risk is that music rights holders eventually overplay their hand, demanding too much from partners with too little flexibility. I have been hearing for some time from a number of ‘partner’ companies that they are beginning to question whether music is worth the hassle. Meanwhile SVOD services and YouTubers are waiting eagerly in the wings…

Another part of the equation is that recorded music revenue only paints a small part of the global music industry picture (i.e. also including publishing, live and merch). In fact, recorded music has declined from being 60% of all music industry revenue in 2000 to around 30% today. Most artist managers now view recorded music primarily as a marketing platform to drive live revenue. Unfortunately record labels aren’t in a position to think that way.

Whatever perspective you view this from though, one thing is clear, music’s role in the global digital content marketplace is small and shrinking.

So the Beatles are finally coming to streaming…well much of the Beatles’ catalogue is at least. Is it a big deal? Kind of. The Beatles were late to iTunes and they’re now late to streaming. Fashionably late though. No so soon as to be left standing awkwardly waiting for something to happen and not too late to miss the real action.

The Beatles are unique enough, and important enough to dictate their own terms and set their own timetable. For streaming services the Beatles catalogue is strategically important in the way it was for iTunes in that it helps communicate the value proposition of all the music in the world…well most of it. For the Beatles it represents the opportunity to reach younger audiences that sales are currently missing (which in large part explains why the catalogue is being made available on free tiers too).

It’s All About Targeting

20 years ago everyone pretty much bought the same product, the CD. Now though the music consumer landscape is fragmented and siloed. The fact that Adele’s ‘Hello’ simultaneously delivered stellar performance across audio streaming, video streaming, download sales and radio illustrates that there are many highly distinct groups of consumers that do one but not the other. This what Universal will be banking on with bringing the Beatles to streaming: they’ll be hoping that most of the future prospective buyers of Beatles albums are not streaming. For as long as this elongated transition phase continues, this sort of approach can work.

What Happens When The Bottom Falls Out Of the Catalogue Business?

The business model of record labels has long depended on revenue from back catalogue propping up the loss-leading new artists, on whom labels have to spend heavily to break. That model works as long as back catalogue sales are vibrant. But cracks are now showing in that model. Labels, especially the big ones, are increasingly spending even more heavily on a smaller number of big bets. For major labels many of these are either manufactured or laser targeted pop acts that grow big fast but like genetically modified crops, soak the nutrients out of their fan-base soil and are less likely to have long term careers. This means breaking artists are costing more to break and have less long term revenue potential.

That double whammy in itself would be bad enough, but there is an even more important structural factor at play. Catalogue sales depend on people buying classic albums, reissues and retrospectives. The secret is in the term ‘sales’. The model does not translate the same way to sales. Getting someone to spend $10 on an album for old times’ sake that they might listen to a handful of times but value having in their collection is very different from earning $0.20 or so from the same number of listens. But that is the way the world is heading. Older music buyers (i.e. from late 30’s onwards) are the lifeblood of catalogue sales.

That model works for older consumers that grew up buying music and thus have the habit. But what happens what happens when the first millennials enter their late 30s? Which is exactly what is going to start happening from 2016 onwards. As each new cohort of aging millennials passes 35 a smaller percentage of them will have ever regularly bought music. Thus from 2016 onwards every year will mean an ever smaller number of catalogue buyers coming into the top of the funnel.

The long term implications are clear. While this will not be anything like an instant collapse, the impact will be progressively more painful as each year passes. The old label model of developing a vast bank of copyrights will become less and less relevant.

So Beatles, welcome to streaming, this will be your last new format hurrah.

This is the fourth post in my YouTube economy series. You can read the other posts here,here and here

The music industry has a long history of underplaying the role of video, insisting on seeing it as merely a tactic for driving sales. In doing so it let two businesses that understood the wider value of music video become global superpowers. MTV and YouTube knew that music fans, especially younger ones, could connect with their favourite artists via video in way that they could not with audio alone. The labels were able to put MTV and YouTube down as an irritating mistake (albeit the exact same one made twice) because for a long while they were still selling units of music product, albeit in reducing numbers by the time YouTube arrived on the scene. Now though, as we accelerate into the consumption era all bets are off. Consumers want to pay for access to content – either with money (subscription) or with attention (ads). With revenue generated by streams rather than up front transactions, both access models demand increased engagement. This means that video must shift from marketing tactic to revenue bearing product. Slowly but surely labels are waking up to this new reality and Sony Music’s deal with YouTube star Kurt Hugo Schneider hints at what the future may hold.

Sony’s Schneider Deal Is A Nod To The Future Music Economy

Sony’s partnership with Schneider will see the creation of a 10 episode series of shows featuring Sony artists performing their songs with him. Crucially the shows will be distributed via Schneider’s YouTube channel which has 6 million subscribers and 40 million monthly views. 5 years ago, even trying to build the business case for such a project around a frontline Sony artist would have been nigh-on impossible with production costs failing to justify likely TV licensing revenue. But with YouTube Sony can both spend less on production and cut out the TV network middleman, going direct to the audience. Whilst a big part of the internal business case justification at Sony will likely centre around the ‘exposure’ Sony’s artists will get, there will be no small number of Sony execs who know that the real value of this is the video series itself, both in terms of audience engagement and revenue.

As I explained in my previous YouTube posts, the platform is emerging as the single most important content destination for Millennials and their younger siblings Generation Edge (i.e. those born since 2000). Right now traditional music artists are at a marked disadvantage to native YouTube creators: they put out 1 music video maybe once every 3 months while a YouTuber will put out that many videos a week. A middle ground exists between those two extremes, one that can provide the vital ingredients for helping music artists get more viewing time and help transition music video from low income marketing tool into a meaningful revenue generating product in its own right.

Universal’s KSI Deal Only Scratches The Surface

Universal Music have taken a more traditional approach to tapping YouTube, picking a successful YouTuber and turning him into a pop star. The YouTuber in question is British gamer KSI who numbers 2 billion YouTube views, 11 million subscribers and $4.5 million in annual YouTube earnings, making him the fifth highest YouTuber globally. So far his cross over pop/Grime singles have had modest success though Island will be hoping his latest collaboration with JME, ‘Keep Up’ will make bigger sales waves. But even if it does that will be missing so much of KSI’s potential. By his own admission KSI is a YouTuber first and a rapper second. Island should be exploring all the ways they can make that distinction blur into insignificance. Partnering with YouTubers like KSI is an invaluable first step, but the real opportunity for Universal is to explore how KSI can take them on a journey into the YouTube industry not for them to take KSI on a journey into the music industry.

Online Video Momentum Is Acclerating, And Some

The direction of travel of the video market is hard to discount. Short form video is growing at an unprecedented rate: there were 5.9 trillion short from video views in in the first three quarters of 2015 with growth more than doubling from Q4 2014. (See the MIDiA report ‘Short Form Video Growth’ for more). Meanwhile the glut in online display ad inventory driven by content farms like Outbrain and Taboola is making video advertising an increasingly sought after commodity. Will video revenue ever be enough to offset lost music sales revenue at an industry level? Perhaps not, but it certainly can at an artist level. Not too many artists can boast KSI’s $4.5 million annual income.

The Business Case For YouTube’s Music Economy Role Needs To Be More Rounded

We need to take a realistic view of YouTube’s current role in the music ecosystem. It can no longer be justified as a loss leader for driving sales and ‘exposure’. The number one activity that consumers do after they discover a new artist on YouTube is….watch them on YouTube some more. 65% of under 25’s say they use YouTube this way. So more value needs to extracted from those users when they are on YouTube, rather than hoping for them to pop over to Spotify or iTunes to do something that creates bigger chunks of direct music industry revenue. Sure some of that is still going to happen but it will do so in dwindling numbers over the next 5 years, with music sales revenue declining by 39% by 2020.

The business case for YouTube has to be much more rounded and nuanced while the industry continues through its transition phase. Sales and access will coexist for many years, occasionally giving the impression of a schizophrenic nature. Adele encapsulates the twin-speed nature of the music industry as it transitions between eras. As impressive as Adele’s sales figures are they are an anomaly, a temporary high tide while the music sales waters continue to irretrievably recede. Plotted against the longer music sales trend it is clear that ‘21’ followed exactly the same path – a dramatic stand out success that was a blip on the downward curve. Adele is also unique in having such strong audience reach among older consumers that still buy music and younger ones that stream. So while she’s been busy breaking sales records she has also excelled on streaming, racking up half a billion views of her ‘Hello’ video.

For Better Or For Worse, YouTube Is Generation Edge’s Punk

Music fans exist in multimedia, on demand environments where video, social engagement are the norm and authentic connections with stars are the gold dust that they seek out. YouTube is the punk movement of Generation Edge. It is an antidote to the over-produced, generic, middle of the road, overtly commercialism of traditional media. YouTube creators may still be finding their creative voices but the fact Sid Vicious couldn’t really play bass was part of the entire point of the Sex Pistols. It was a big fat two fingers up at the establishment. Sure, most YouTubers are hardly rebels without a cause but they are outside the traditional media establishment and therein lies the real power of video that the music most learn how to participate in without ending up looking like a dancing dad.